Page 15 of The Pucking Wrong Rookie

My buzzer went off, signaling that someone was in the lobby waiting for me, and I frowned…a little, stupid, spark of hope flickering inside me. Maybe it was my dad.

I pressed the button.

“Socks, can you let me up already? There’s a chick taking pictures of me through the glass doors. She’s got the glint.”

I smirked, a sense of fucking relief filling my chest at the sound of my best friend’s voice.

At least there would be one friendly face in the crowd cheering me on tonight.

“Get up here before she starts crying and pounding on the glass,” I teased, proud of myself for not sounding emotional at all.

A minute later, there was a hard knock on the door, and I barely had time to get it halfway open before Asher barreled through like a freight train. “Socks!” he shouted, grinning like a kid on Christmas. And then his arms were around me in one of his infamous bear hugs that could probably crack my ribs if he wanted to.

It had been a few months since I’d seen him, but Asher hadn’t changed a bit. His dark brown hair was a little longer, still that messy “I don’t own a comb” kind of look that seemed to drive women crazy. His green eyes were still their usual mix of mischief and genuine excitement, the kind that always made it impossible to stay mad at him. I could already see the gleam of trouble brewing there.

“Dude, I’m about to play in the Stanley Cup Finals, not a wrestling match,” I grunted, though I didn’t bother trying to push him off. It was Asher. If he didn’t greet you like a golden retriever who hadn’t seen you in years, something was seriously wrong.

He finally let go, stepping back with that wide grin still plastered on his face. “First game of the Finals, man! I wasn’t gonna miss it. You really think you could get through this without me here?”

I rolled my eyes, pretending I wasn’t all emotional at the sight of him.

He cackled and pounded my back one more time before releasing me and immediately heading to the kitchen.

If there was anything I could count on with Asher, it was his appetite.

“You must be the luckiest asshole in the whole fucking world,” Asher commented a few minutes later with a mouth full of chips as he somehow stuffed in another handful in the same breath. I wrinkled my nose when he winked. He looked like a demented chipmunk.

Wait a second. Those weren’t just chips. Those weremyfucking chips. My Flaming Hot Cheetos!

What a fucking bastard.

“Give those to me,” I growled, snatching them out of his red-stained fingers. “You know that I have to eat Flaming Hot Cheetos every game day. That’s my last fucking bag.”

He grinned and chewed slowly, really driving it home that he’d managed to down half of the bag before I realized anything.

“And donotwipe your fingers on my couch,” I ordered, shaking the bag at him because despite the fact that his mama had taught him manners, he always seemed to forget them when he was at my house.

Or anywhere, actually.

There was a reason Mama Matthews considered me her favorite child. Herrealson was a giant pig.

Asher sighed and made a big show of wiping his hands on a towel before he grabbed my Gatorade and took a big gulp. It was a good thing that I’d gotten used to sharing with him after he’d hit me in the head with an errant baseball when our Little League teams were playing each other. As I’d stared up at the sky and wondered if I was dead, a grinning brown-haired boy with freckled cheeks had leaned over and told me I was an embarrassment to baseball players everywhere and I needed to “man the fuck up.”

We were eight.

We’d also been best friends ever since.

“Why am I the luckiest bastard on the planet?” I asked, popping a delicious ambrosia-of-the-gods Cheeto in my mouth. I could already feel my super hockey powers building.

“Stanley Cup Finals as a rookie? Even Lincoln Daniels didn’t manage that,” Asher said, as he strolled over to my fridge.

I mentally added a “King” to the front of Lincoln’s name. Not that I was ever going to tell a single soul that I did that.

Wouldn’t want to be labeled “a simp.”

The team already had one too many of those. *Cough*Walker Davis*Cough*.

“To say I’m a prime reason for that, would be a lie. The team is literally made of superstars at this point,” I told him, even though inwardly I was preening. Up for Rookie of the Year. Stanley Cup Finals. It wasn’t a bad gig to be me.

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